Strategy Guide
Boundless Planet Strategy Guide This is an unofficial strategy guide for how to play Boundless Planet. 'Starting Out' When you first start the game, the first thing you want to do is scout around your immediate surroundings and find resources and neighbors. Ideally, you want to spawn somewhere away from other players so you can have room to expand. You also want to spawn somewhere near plenty of Oils and Irons so that you have a good economy and can support large numbers of units. If you spawn in an undesirable location, just surrender and try again until you spawn somewhere you like. 'Collecting Resources' To get your economy going and to start building more structures and units, you need resources. There are two kinds of resources in Boundless Planet: Iron and fuel. Iron is obtained from Iron Mines, which can be built on top of Iron Deposits. Fuel is obtained from Oil Refineries, which are built on top of Oil Deposits. Iron is required to build anything, making it extremely vital to expansion and production. A constant supply of fuel is required by all units and Power Plants, making it vital to the construction of power-dependant structures and the survival of your units at your bases. Units and structures without fuel or power (including power plants that have run out of fuel) will slowly take damage over time. If left unpowered or unfueled, respectively, they will continue to take damage until they are destroyed. When you first start the game and begin scouting, you should immediately build an Iron Mine at the nearest Iron Deposit to your initial Command Center. You should also build an Oil Refinery on the nearest Oil Deposit. You should start at a location with at least one Oil and one Iron within your Command Center's control area. The resources will automatically be transferred to the Command Center, so manually transporting them is not required. Scout out nearby Iron Deposits outside your Command Center's control area and build Iron Mines on them when you have enough Iron to do so. Build Transports and set up Supply Lines from the Iron Mines to the nearest Command Center. Add the Transports to the supply lines to deliver the Iron back to your bases. You should set the supply lines to maintain 5000 iron at your command centers at all times. Remember to also check the "Refuel" box at the command center so the Transport doesn't run out of fuel. 'Researching Tech' If you're a paid player, then building a Research isn't necessary. If you are a free trial player, then you will need to research technology to unlock better units. Researching tech can take a considerable amount of time. It is best practice to build multiple Researches (I typically build 2 or 3) and research multiple technologies at once. Once the tech has been researched, the research is no longer necessary and should be destroyed to save power. 'Expanding' Expanding your territory is an essential component of Boundless Planet gameplay. You should build command centers so that at least one oil and one iron are within the CC's control area. If you find a location with two oils close by each other, even if they are not near any irons, you should build a CC so that both the oils are in the CC's control area. Double oil bases produce twice as much fuel per hour and can support twice as many units and powered structures. Double oil bases are perfect for establishing strongholds. 'Distributing Resources' It is good practice to distribute resources between your structures, especially your Command Centers, to maximize the amount of resources you can store at one time. You can store resources in almost every unit and structure, but you do not want to use combat units or builders due to their low inventory capacity. You should connect your command centers with 50/50 supply lines by creating supply lines between them and setting them to maintain 50% iron at both locations. This can also be done with fuel, but it is not good practice to build bases that depend on fuel being delivered from another location. The 50/50 supply line will insure that all your Command Centers have an equal amount of iron at all times, and will distribute the iron evenly between your bases. To increase your storage capacity, you should set up 50/50 supply lines between each command center and nearby structures such as Factories, Power Plants, Shipyards and Hangars. These types of structures can hold up to 2000 iron or fuel each. A base with a command center, a power plant and a factory can store up to 5000 fuel and 9000 iron (5000 in the command center, 2000 in the power plant and 2000 in the factory). When building units, production facilities such as factories and shipyards will use iron in their inventory if no other iron is available. Another advantage of the 50/50 supply line network is that it will automatically replenish iron at a base if it has less iron than other bases it is connected to either directly or indirectly by the supply lines. This allows you to produce extremely large numbers of units at once since the iron gets automatically replenished via supply line as you use it. There is also a trick to store extremely large amounts of iron by using freighters. If you create a "chain" of several freighters and set up a 50/50 supply line between each of them, they will distribute resources evenly among each other automatically as the resources are added. If one of the freighters touches land, you can set up a 50/50 supply line between it and a command center to greatly increase your iron storage capacity. Each freighter can hold up to 10,000 iron. 'Building units & defenses' To survive in Boundless Planet, you will need to build good defenses at your bases. Defense cannons are designed specifically for this purpose and they are the best solution for base defense. Defense cannons have very high range, damage and refire rate, as well as high HP. They are most effective when built close together in clusters, and around your most important structures (oil refineries and power plants). One power plant can support up to 5 defense cannons. It is important to defend your oil refineries and power plants because if these are destroyed, your base can be severely crippled. Do not waste iron and fuel building defense cannons around other structures. You should place your defense cannons around the power plant and oil refinery, staying within the power plant's (not the command center's) control area so that they will continue to function even if the command center is taken out. The power plant(s) should be built right next to oil refineries. You can supplement your defense cannons with aa tanks and tritanks to provide additional support against air and ground units. I personally use a ratio of 1-2 aa tanks for every tritank, and generally keep a minimum of 16 aas and 8 tritanks at each base. I usually have at least 32 AA tanks and 16 tritanks at my double oil bases. Keep the aas and tritanks right next to your defense cannons so that their firepower is combined. For coastal bases, frigates are a good choice too because they can target all unit types. When parking units at your bases, be sure to set their defensive settings so that they do not wander too far away from base. If left at their default values, your unit's defense settings can be exploited by other players to lure them away from your base using a distraction unit while a second team of units attacks the base. They can also be lured away from the defense cannons to be destroyed by units that would have otherwise been unable to take them out. Unless you're very paranoid, you should generally keep the Engagement Event set to "approaching enemies". I usually keep Engagement Range at it's default value, but you can set it to the unit's maximum sight range. You should set Pursuit Range to 5, which should keep your units within range of your defense cannons. Request Reinforcement Range and Provide Reinforcement range should be the maximum distance between your units when they are engaging enemies. I usually set this to something between 15 and 30. This insures that the units always reinforce each other when your base is under attack. Be advised, however, that Provide Reinforcement Range disregards Pursuit Range when providing reinforcement to other units and can still be exploited under the right conditions. 'Attacking other players' In Boundless Planet, war is inevitable. Even the most peaceful players will eventually find themselves in combat. To insure your victory, you should choose your units and their targets wisely. Before you attack, you should thoroughly scout out the target base and it's surrounding area. Identify any enemy supply lines and destroy those first. Destroying an enemy's supply lines can cut off their access to critical resources necessary to defend themselves. You should check for nearby threats and analyze the enemy base's defense capabilities to get an idea of what type of units to use and how many you'll need to successfully attack them. People typically use tritanks for ground-based assaults and planes for air-based assaults. The reason for this is primarily because these units are fast and cost-effective. However, these units do not deal the most damage and do not have very good range. They are only effective against a well-defended base if built in extremely large numbers. For well defended bases, it is sometimes necessary to use other units and/or different tactics. If the enemy base has a large number of defense cannons accompanied by anti-ground units (such as planes, tritanks, hartys, etc), you should use a fast unit such as a scout to lure them away from the base. If you are able to lure the units away from the defense cannons, then their pursuit range has been set too high and you can exploit this to lure the units into a "killzone". To set up a killzone, use an adequate number of heavy artillery, tritanks and/or aa tanks (depending on what kind of units the enemy has) and position them close together in a location just outside the enemy units' engagement range. Make sure you set their pursuit range so that they do not approach the enemy base if they spot enemy units. To use the killzone, simply send a single, fast unit such as a scout into the enemy's engagement range. As the enemy units approach, move the unit back towards your killzone to lure the enemy units to it and enjoy the fireworks. When attacking an enemy base, you should always target their oil refineries or power plants first. If they do not have any defense cannons, take out their oil refinery. If they have defense cannons, take out their power plant(s) and then their oil refinery(s). If you discover or create a gap inbetween the enemy's defense cannons, you can use long-range units such as artillery, heavy artillery or frigates to "snipe" the power plant while remaining out of the cannon's range. If you destroy their power plant(s), any nearby structures that depend on them for power (such as defense cannons) will immediately become disabled. Unpowered structures that depend on power will slowly take damage over time and eventually get destroyed unless power is restored. If you destroy their oil refinery, their base will no longer produce fuel, and any units they have parked there will slowly run out of fuel and begin to take damage until they are destroyed. Once you've destroyed their oil refinery/power plant, you should wait until their units run out of fuel (if the enemy player is offline) and destroy their command center so that they lose any resources they had stored there. Destroy any buildings that they may be using to store resoruces. If you find any enemy iron mines, destroy them to reduce their iron income.